Chaco Culture NHP and University of Virginia collaborate on the Chaco
Digital Initiative

Prehistoric masonry buildings in Chaco Canyon (NPS photo)

Some places have been investigated by archeologists over long periods
of time because they are endlessly fascinating. Chaco Culture National Historical
Park in New Mexico is such a place. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find
and keep track of widely scattered artifact collections, notes, photographs,
and drawings made by many individuals and institutions for over a century.
The Chaco Digital Initiative addresses this problem, making it possible
to test and revise archeological interpretations of Chaco culture using
the full range of resources.

The Chaco Digital Initiative (CDI)
is a collaborative effort between the NPS, the University of Virginia, and
a number of museums, universities, archives, and laboratories to integrate
much of the widely dispersed archeological data collected from Chaco Canyon
in the late 1890s and the first half of the 20th century. Its goal is to
ensure that these early archeological research records are preserved and
accessible to future generations. Currently, these materials are housed
at numerous repositories around the country, making it difficult to answer
even fundamental research questions. The Chaco Digital Initiative is making
the research and human history of this national treasure more easily available
through a comprehensive digital research archive, parts of which can be
accessed through a public website.

Prehistoric Habitation in Chaco Canyon

Between AD 850 and 1250, Chaco Canyon was a hub of cultural activity in
the high mountain desert of the San Juan Basin. At Chaco, Native Americans
built an intricately planned landscape of massive, multi-storied masonry
buildings, roads with carved stairways and masonry ramps, and water control
and distribution systems, marked by a notable concentration of petroglyphs,
pictographs, and calendrical markings documenting solar, lunar, and stellar
events. Engineering and landscaping shaped and reflected Chacoans' view
of the world. During its height, Native peoples visited Chaco as a center
for ceremony, trade, and political administration. By AD 1300, however,
Chaco Canyon, like most of the Four Corners region, was deserted as an urban
center.

Despite the large number of identified settlements (over 3,600 archeological
sites) and the extensive excavations that have been carried out, many questions
about occupation of Chaco Canyon remain to be answered. Was Chaco a political
center (Sebastian 1992), a ritual center (Renfrew 2001; Yoffee 2001), an
economic center (Earle 2001) or some combination of these functions (Judge
1989, 1993)? Was there significant social differentiation among the residents
of Chaco and, if not, then how were the large number of workers mobilized
to build great houses? What was the nature of the relationships within the
Chaco “system” among canyon great houses and the many surrounding
outliers? How can we explain the dichotomy between the large great houses
and the numerous small house sites? Does such a dichotomy suggest significant
social or political differentiation? What were the key organizational groups
or networks upon which Chacoan society was constructed? Even more basic
questions such as how many people lived in Chaco remain unresolved, with
wide discrepancies between the lower and higher estimates.

The Antiquities Act: Chaco is Protected

By the 19th century, when Mexican and American explorers entered the region,
evidence of the monumental architecture was still visible in the standing
walls of the pueblos, some up to four stories in height. Publication of
a journal chronicling the 1849 military reconnaissance of the region provided
detailed descriptions, maps, and drawings of the great houses along the
Chaco Wash and on the surrounding mesas. Intense public interest in the
American Southwest created a market for antiquities, spurring museum collecting
expeditions. One of the earliest was in 1896, when the Hyde Exploring Expedition
teamed up museum archeologist George Pepper as field director and rancher
Richard Wetherill as excavation foreman. Their objective was to excavate
Pueblo Bonito—one of the most spectacular structures in Chaco Canyon—a
four- or five-story semi-circular stone structure covering more than three
acres and containing over 600 rooms and 40 kivas.

Concern over the looting of artifacts and loss of irreplaceable information
into private collections led to the designation of Chaco Canyon National
Monument on March 11, 1907. Its proclamation referred to the extensive prehistoric
pueblo ruins as possessing “extraordinary interest because of their
number and their great size and because of the innumerable and valuable
relics of a prehistoric people which they contain.” Through early
research efforts of Richard Wetherill, George Pepper, and Edgar Hewett,
the monument was created in conjunction with the Antiquities Act of 1906.
(Learn more about the Antiquities Act.)

In 1966, Chaco Canyon was listed in the National Register of Historic Places
as a place of national significance. In 1980, Congress re-named the park
Chaco National Historical Park and increased its size. In 1987, Chaco Canyon
was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site signaling its importance as
a valued part of international cultural patrimony. Today, Chaco era ruins
continue to be a focus of preservation efforts both domestically and abroad.

Need for a Digital Archive

Early excavations of the 1890s and 1920s in Chaco Canyon centered on discovering
the genesis and evolution of the ancestral Puebloan “Anasazi”
inhabitants. These early research efforts conducted by the American Museum
of Natural History, the National Geographic Society, and the Smithsonian
Institution placed Chaco at the center of the evolving discipline of archeological
science. However, resolution of basic research questions has been hindered
by the fact that the pre-1970s fieldwork in the canyon has been inadequately
reported. Pepper and Wetherill's excavation of much of Pueblo Bonito, including
extraordinary artifact assemblages, has been described in only one short
monograph and a few articles (Pepper 1899, 1905, 1906, 1909, 1920; see also
Reyman 1989). Neil Judd's later work at Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo
resulted in three published volumes but do not provide information on all
of the artifacts recovered or the large number of rooms and areas excavated.
Edgar Hewett never published a major monograph on the Chetro Ketl excavations.

Exacerbating deficiencies in the published excavation record for Chaco
is the distribution of the artifacts, images, and field records from the
excavated great houses (primarily Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo del Arroyo, Chetro
Ketl, Kin Kletso, and Pueblo Alto) and small house sites. Numerous institutions
house these collections including the National Anthropological Archives;
the National Museum of the American Indian; the National Museum of Natural
History; the American Museum of Natural History; the Chaco Culture National
Historical Park; the Maxwell Museum; and the Museum of New Mexico. As Wills
(2001:448) notes, many of the proposed models of how Chacoan society was
structured and developed rely on data collected in the early part of the
20th century. An archeologist attempting to test these ideas, however, faces
the daunting and expensive task of assembling material from widely scattered
sources. The result has been that while models often emphasize data from
the early studies of the canyon, tests of these models often rely only on
the more fully published recent excavations.

Moreover, as Mills (2002:81) has observed, it has been difficult to initiate
new fieldwork in the canyon since the completion of the joint NPS-University
of New Mexico Chaco Project. In fact, there has been virtually no new fieldwork
in the canyon in the last two decades (Mills 2002:68) and, for a variety
of reasons, prospects for major excavations in the near future are minimal.
Data from the earlier projects described above are thus likely to comprise
the archeological record available to scholars for the foreseeable future.

The Chaco Digital Archive

The Chaco Digital Archive is not yet completed, but brings together a vast
amount of information in the form of references, field notes, images, maps,
and tree ring dates on excavations at five key sites—Pueblo Bonito,
Bc 50, Bc 51, Bc 53, and Aztec Ruins—and various other related sites.
Much data are already digitized, and a portion is available on the Chaco
Digital Initiative website. Completion of the archives is planned for 2007.

The data are compiled into a number of individual databases. Users will
be able to search information by user specified criteria or through a graphical
interface.

F. Joan Mathien bibliography (on CDI website)

The F. Joan Mathien bibliography contains primary research reports, summaries,
discussion papers, and analysis through early 2005. It has been compiled
and generously donated by F. Joan Mathien, a Chaco scholar, archeologist
for the National Park Service, editor for and author of various Chaco Canyon
Studies volumes from the Chaco Project, and member of the CDI Steering Committee.

Image Gallery (on CDI website)

Because maps, drawings, and photographs from the early projects in Chaco
Canyon are critical to understanding the pre-contact occupation of this
important region, the images and maps from the National Geographic Society
and Smithsonian excavations in Chaco Canyon have now been digitized. Ultimately
these and many other images will be integrated and made available through
a relational database.

The set of images currently available on the website are all from the Neil
Judd collection. Judd directed the National Geographic/Smithsonian project
from 1920 through 1927 and excavated a number of sites, including Pueblo
Bonito, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Shabik'eshchee. All accompanying captions
are from the original photographs. These images speak to both the history
and prehistory of Chaco Canyon.

Inventory Database (on CDI website)

This database tracks the location of archival materials pertaining to the
early projects in Chaco Canyon. The inventory database currently contains
comprehensive information about the Neil Judd and Frank Roberts collections
at the National Anthropological Archives. It also contains partial inventories
from the following seven institutions:

The American Museum of Natural History

The Latin American Library at Tulane University

The Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University

The Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University

The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History

Aztec Ruins National Monument

Chaco Culture National Historical Park

The Chaco Archive and Vivian Archive

Tree Ring Database (on CDI website)

Tree-ring dates from several of the great houses in Chaco Canyon and from
Aztec are now available, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.